Email Marketing

Nobody’s makin’ the big bucks by pitching their products to an empty room. If you’re a small business owner with a little boutique, restaurant, or car repair garage, it’s pretty easy to tell when you have no customers… ———–> no one’s walking through the front door. But, in the age of social media where regardless of your own following, you are still bombarded with hundreds of posts a day, that amount of newsfeed traffic can give the illusion that your actual audience is bigger than it really is. It’s time to face facts: if you want to be successful in online marketing, you gotta have a tribe to which you can market. I’m not just talking about an audience or following. If you want to sell your goods using social media, you need to have a base of dedicated fans that are true ideal customers.

You've seen those tempting Buzzfeed quizzes on Facebook. Maybe you've even taken a few. I mean, don't you want to know if you and Jim Halpert are a match made in heaven? Quizzes are an awesome tool for lead generation if the topic piques your audience's attention. Here’s the proof. Kayla Hollatz created a quiz

You know that feeling. You’re look’n fine, having a fantastic hair day, and wearing your favorite little black dress. You’re strutting along, humming your favorite song, and you realize… all eyes are on you. You have their attention. Everyone is intrigued and wants to know you. You get a huge response from everyone you pass by. You almost feel the need to take a bow.

If your audience is on Pinterest, then you SHOULD be using this channel for email list building or you could be losing precious customers. I know, I know… that’s a pretty bold statement. But you know me….that’s just how I am. A pretty bold girl! Let me share an example that I gave on Instagram Stories earlier this month to prove my point. From Jan 1, 2017 – June 12, 2017 (so, over the course of 162 days) my agency helped a client generate: 48,820 visits to their website from Pinterest 6,029 NEW email addresses from Pinterest When you break this down even further, it means we are seeing 37 NEW email addresses/day from Pinterest. And, for the most part, this all runs on autopilot. Say whhhhat?!?

I tried to do the math on my email marketing work. You see, I have been sending emails for almost 10 years now. And some weeks I send upwards to 100 emails. On average though, I send about 50 emails a week. Let’s break this down. (50 email deploys/week x 52 weeks/year) x 10 years = 26,000 email deploys And this, my friends, is why my brother-in-law teases me about “spamming” inboxes. Only…it’s not spam. My email open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates are proof of this. When done right, email marketing is far from spammy.

In my first year as a “real marketer” I sent over 500 emails. It was my first job after graduating from Arizona State University and I got the job title of “Direct Response Marketing Specialist”. Which was a fancy way of saying I managed email deploys. As part of my duties, I had to forecast the return on investment of EVERY email campaign BEFORE we even deployed it. This way, we could decide if it was worth sending or not. Almost every time we performed our forecast, we found there was a positive ROI.

I still remember the first email campaign I sent almost 10 years ago. Crazy. I was fresh out of college. I had just landed my first “corporate” job. And my first week on the job, I was given my first “real” marketing task. To deploy an email. Talk about diving right in! I quickly learned

Email marketing is my jam! Okay, maybe that’s a slight overstatement. It may not be my jam, but it’s definitely something that makes my heart go pitter patter. For the record: My heart goes pitter patter when I see my daughters’ faces too. So there may be a few things I love more than talking “email strategy”.

I’m about to make a bold statement. Are you ready for it? Email marketing is the MOST powerful digital marketing channel. Period. In fact, the Direct Marketing Association estimates that for every $1 you spend on email marketing you will get $38 back. That’s an ROI of 3800%!!! Say whhhhat?